Graduate Personal Statement Guide

When I was little, a pencil and paintbrush were extensions of my fingers. I couldn't say my ABCs or count to 23, but with a box of crayons, 1,000 words were at my fingertips. In kindergarten, my teachers couldn't stop me from doodling sloppy circles and smiley faces all over my notes. Until one day there was when finally, a subject that put my hobbies and talents to use: science.

I loved science because it was fascinating, constantly changing, and allowed me to expand my mind further than my imagination. Each science class brought a new world of knowledge, excitement, and change. As Galapagos turtles and finches were adapting in my head, my artwork was evolving as well. Erase, focus, sketch, erase, focus, sketch-a discipline that became ingrained in me. Overtime, with enough practice and patience, those smiley faces transformed into soccer balls and sunflowers.

It wasn't until I attended an event at my sister's medical school called A Day in the Life of a Medical Student that I was finally able to unite my interests. Unlike most people who turned away from the sight of smell exposed organs or pinched their nose from the smell of formaldehyde, I perused the bodily exhibits, too excited to feel disturbed or nauseous. I performed my first surgery on a pig's foot, ensuring the sutures were perfect distances apart, resembling the laces of a football. From that day on, I was hooked; I left knowing I would pursue a career in medicine. At home, those sunflower sketches started sprouting into cell cycles and circulatory systems.

My education and experiences at West Virginia University solidified my path to becoming a physician assistant. I studied a variety of subjects such as epigenetics, ecology, evolution, virology, microbiology, and comparative anatomy. I was prompted to think in ways I never had before; instead of giving up when I failed, looked for new approaches and remained resilient. When I reattempted organic chemistry, I flipped, expanded, and reduced carbon rings all over the page until a solution was met. To my surprise, I found that I loved tutoring my classmates; whether it was drawing the virus life cycle step-by-step on a whiteboard or making a video tutorial of an anatomy dissection from start to finish, teaching through art became my new passion. Shifting among a wide array of talents, interests, and studies, my versatility is similar to physician assistants, who have the ability to transfer their knowledge and skills from one specialty to another. With my experience at WVU, I can take a problem flip it, expand it, and reduce it until I reach an innovative solution that doctors and patients expect from their physician assistants.

Hahn Medical Practices was where I met the Michelangelo's and Da Vinci's of dermatology. My experience there has afforded me the opportunity to shadow these outstanding artists-surgical physician assistants. In one particular instance of a Moh's Surgery I remember entering a room, startled to find a patient with no skin on the majority of her left cheek and half of her nose. Calm and collected, the PA carefully prepared and drew out the skin flap on her forehead to replace the cancer-ridden skin. When the PA asked me to assist her, I jumped at the chance, both intrigued and ready for whatever would happen next. I assisted the PA as she cut the skin flap in the correct shape, twisted the flap over the nose, and secured it with interrupted stitches. When the patient came back a month later, she was cancer free and looking better than ever.

The patient's turnout was not only the result of the PA's amazing suturing ability, but also because of her warm, personable, reassuring attitude towards the patients- personality traits I both admired and to which I could relate. Looking back, compared to the PA's stitches, the pig I sutured years ago looked more like I had butchered the pig's foot. Ever since that day, I've yearned to transform that butchered foot into football laces, just like how my sloppy circles evolved into cell cycles and circulatory systems.

Being a surgical physician assistant is like being a sculptor, except instead of clay, marble, or granite, the medium is skin, human flesh, and tissue. The piece of art is not just some sculpture sitting in a museum; it's a walking, talking, living, breathing human being. My patients would benefit from my situational awareness, my interest in a multitude of subjects, my compassion to teach, my attention to detail, and my steady hands that were once used for painting. In the future, my goal is to add a scalpel and needle driver to my tool kit so I can truly make an impact on my patient's lives through art. I believe I embody what Albert Einstein meant when he said, "the greatest scientists are artists as well" (Lee, 2021).

I waited patiently by the bench in what all Harvey Mudd chemistry majors call the "Super Lab," staring for what seemed to be hours at a small flask bubbling with something that looked like a cross between Pepto-Bismol and whipped cream. I was waiting for the color to turn just the right shade of blue before I could go home for a late dinner, but it was obvious that this solution was as far from blue as baseball is from rugby. I realized then that "Super Lab" was not so Super, and neither was a career as a chemist.

Every summer since high school, I worked at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory as a research assistant. One of my major projects involved working on a team to develop probes for the detection of radioactive substances. When I turned in my final report, a computer program that would give the same results in five minutes four people would in a week, my pride turned into disappointment when my supervisor took credit for all of my hard work. Unbeknownst to me, somewhere in tiny print in the contract signed as an employee; it said something to the effect that as an employee I would relinquish all rights to everything that I developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. I felt that it was unfair for a company to claim such rights to its employees' innovations and desired to learn more about the issues surround intellectual property.

I was introduced to the field of intellectual property law in industrial chemistry, taught by Professor Gerald Van Hecke. For my final report, I researched the development of the Gore-Tex fiber by procuring its patent from an online patent service. At that time, I was considering a career in the management sector of the chemical industry because I wanted to combine my knowledge of applied chemistry with my interest working with people. However, once I was introduced to industrial chemistry law, I realized a career in law would not only incorporate all my skills but would give me more breadth than management in a chemical company. Whereas management would limit me to a particular industry, IP law would expose me to a number of industries. IP law would also not confine me to a particular strategy in dealing with problems but force me to develop different strategies based on the industry and the problem that I am dealing with. Law school suddenly became a very attractive career path to me, especially because it would allow me to use my education creatively to help protect the product of peoples' ideas.

Although I am an applied chemistry major, what I have learned as an undergraduate can be applied in many ways to law. Because I have a strong technical background, I have been trained extensively in solving problems both independently and in teams. Although the problems themselves have been technical, the analytical skills I have acquired in solving such problems can be applied to the world of law. Harvey Mudd's unique engineering clinic program allowed me to work on a team of five students to develop a project plan for General Electric Nuclear Energy to bring the concentration of toxic organic compounds in their waste system down to environmentally safe levels. I have also worked on student teams to solve problems for Habitat for Humanity, and during my summer internships to solve problems for the government. Because I am an applicant from a nontraditional background, I can provide a different perspective to problems encountered in law and can even introduce vastly different but equally effective approaches to solving these problems.

My technical background is not the only factor that sets me apart from the traditional law school applicant. Because Harvey Mudd balances its technical program with an equally strong emphasis in the and humanities, I am leaving Mudd with a great education in chemistry and as a technically educated student who is skilled in writing and communication. In addition to my liberal arts background that is unequaled by most technical applicants to law school, I also possess a background that is unique even for a Harvey Mudder. The typical Harvey Mudd student studies at Mudd for four years, then pursues graduate school in a science or engineering field, and then works in either industry or academia. Unlike the typical Mudd student, I have managed not only to perform well academically, but to take advantage of nonacademic opportunities in order to better balance my life.

My experience as the resident assistant of my dorm has given me tools that are necessary to a lawyer such as time management, interpersonal and conflict resolution skills, as well as the ability to effectively deal with crisis situations. Having to juggle my responsibilities as a resident assistant, a student, and an athlete has increased my organizational skills by orders of magnitude. As freshman and sophomore class president, and team leader of an engineering project, I learned how to be more assertive and gained valuable leadership skills in the process. In addition, my membership in the National Forensics League and participation in Lincoln-Douglas debates have provided me with the skills of impromptu speech, or communication, and the art of persuasion using sound facts as the basis for arguments.

I finally managed to completely break the mold of the typical Harvey Mudd student by attempting to study abroad for one semester. This was the greatest challenge of my undergraduate career because not many science and engineering majors, let alone Harvey Mudd students, leave to study at foreign institutions. Many attribute this to the specificity of the science curriculum and the resulting difficulty in finding compatible curricula at foreign institutions. After making use of all the resources possible, I realize that although it is indeed an arduous task to find a university abroad that matches our curriculum to a tee, it is not impossible to do so. After one year of persuading some reluctant administrators to make it easier for a Harvey Mudd student to leave for one semester, I found myself at the University of New South Wales in Australia where I had some of the most valuable experiences in my life. I returned much more independent, and especially aware of the world around me. Upon my return, and due in part to my own example, I discovered that the school had proposed many changes to allow more flexibility in the students' education so that studying abroad would be possible for others who follow me.

I once had the misperception that those who are educated in disciplines such as political science, public policy, or pre-law are more likely to be prepared for a graduate education in law than most other students. Now, I believe that a student coming from a more nontraditional background can contribute in many ways to society as a lawyer. In a world where technology is the dominant means of progress and is advancing at such a breakneck pace, it can be a great advantage to society to have knowledgeable people working with laws concerning technology. I not only believe that I am qualified to perform this service to society as a lawyer, but I am convinced that [school withheld] possesses the quality of education and diversity in student body that can best help me fulfill these goals (California State University Channel Islands, n.d.).

One of the proudest accomplishments of my life was earning my college degree, despite the fact that my early adulthood pointed in the opposite direction, beginning with my marriage at the age of 19. Throughout the 1990s I lived as one of the "working poor," someone who slipped through the cracks of supposedly historic prosperity. By the age of 25, I was divorced and frustrated with menial, low-paying jobs: clerk, receptionist, and housecleaner. There is nothing like scrubbing someone else's toilet to inspire one with determination toward obtaining an education. Because of my absolute commitment toward earning my degree, I got a flexible shift at a retail warehouse which enabled me to acquire my degree while supporting myself financially.

Enrolled at the local community college, I experienced a different world opening up to me; excited by a new encouraging environment, I excelled academically. I learned that if I tried hard, I could succeed; if I wanted something badly enough, I possessed the ability to take advantage of these opportunities. I worked a minimum 35-hour workweek for five years to put myself through school without succumbing to the temptation of a student loan. I paid tuition up front with the money I earned. It was the example of my mother, a Puerto Rican immigrant working diligently to provide for her family, who instilled a work ethic into me that has stood me in good stead. With a lifelong passion for history, I have developed an interest in the cultural history of early modern and modern Europeans, especially women's history. The experiences of ordinary women fascinate me: how they constitute their world through popular folk tales and literature; how the seemingly irrational paradoxes of the past to modern eyes are completely rational when taken within the historical context; and finally, how these historical changes and transformations in culture constitute the present. I enjoy studying the early modern period of English history, especially the Tudor- Stuart period, because of the tensions that existed between medieval philosophies and the rising Enlightenment intellectualism.

My influences have been diverse. I read the popular historian Barbara Tuchman, not for her technical accuracy, but for her beautiful prose. Natalie Zemon Davis's research inspires me in the way that she cleverly picks out fresh life from tired sources. And finally, Michel Foucault's philosophies have profoundly influenced the way I write, for now I have a philosophical grounding that makes me highly sensitive to my own biases. In fact, Foucault's post- structuralist matrix has been instrumental in shaping my current project focusing on the 17th-century midwife Elizabeth Cellier. In this project, I am reexamining the current histories of English midwifery using Cellier as a case study, detecting a decided bias embedded within them. The underlying assumption of these histories is that pre-industrial professional women-and Cellier in particular- struggled against patriarchy and oppression from the male medical community, when in fact Cellier's literature shows that she utilized the accepted discourses of patriarchy available to her in her writing and turned them into useful tools of political and religious power.

As a student, I feel my success lies in the fact that I approached my studies as if I were a professional (historian, not student, that is). I always enrolled in the most challenging courses and worked with professors I felt were the most qualified in my areas of interest. Never did I settle for an A- or B+. If I got one, I would ask what I could do to improve--and ultimately, I utilized the advice to strengthen my work. My personal academic milestone occurred while I was completing a research seminar on historical methods. This required course was taught by an Americanist-Dr. Julie Worth, director of the [school withheld] history department-so our research topics were limited to American sources. I was able to work within my main interest, which is marginalized women, while using the primary sources of The New York Times. The resulting paper, "Biologically Unsound: Women, Murder, and the Insanity Plea in the Progressive Era" examined the preponderant use of the insanity plea for women who went outside their "innate nature" and murdered, regardless of the circumstances which drove them to kill. Although the topic was outside my focus, which is European history, this paper was selected for publication in the Phi Alpha Theta journal, The Historian.

My focus as an undergraduate has always been with an eye toward graduate school and a career as a professional historian. Aware of the rigors of graduate study, I have not only completed an undergraduate language requirement in Spanish, but I am also currently enrolled in an accelerated French course. In addition, I have become active in the historical honor society, Phi Alpha Theta, including serving as chapter president. During my tenure our chapter hosted the Phi Alpha Theta Regional Conference, the largest regional conference in the nation. With the help of faculty adviser Dr. Judith Gaillard, I created the conference sessions, chose appropriate student commentators for those sessions, and gave a keynote speech. The experience taught me that I have a flair for organization as well as mediation. Under my leadership, our chapter also published its first journal and hosted a variety of campus activities. This year I am working with the Computer Society in order to establish a Web site for students who need help succeeding in history courses; we are going to call it the Clio home page. My position as an authority figure both in classroom work and within these various organizations has awakened a desire to embrace teaching, for I enjoy sharing the excitement of education with my peers, as well as helping them achieve their own academic success.

I feel that my life experiences as well as my commitment to education would be an asset to Cornell's doctoral program in History. Cornell has an exciting interdisciplinary program that is exceptionally impressive. In particular, Dr. Rayna Wilhelm's specialty in Tudor-Stuart social and cultural history complements my own interest in studying the experiences of English pre- industrial women. This combination will provide the strong background I desire in order to shape my future research interests. I feel that Cornell is a premier institution for an aspiring Ph.D. candidate and as such, a very competitive program. But I know I have the tools and the determination to excel in such a stimulating and challenging environment (California State University Channel Islands, n.d.).